The Critique; (Constructive) Criticism and Designers
By Oli
At 6:28 PM · Thursday, 15 January · 2004
To Design · The ‘Net
Recently there’s been a bit of heated debate regarding a critique of Jeffrey Zeldman’s website by Paul Scrivens. Several people complained in the comments that the critique was rude because Paul hadn’t notified Jeffrey in advance, or felt that the critique was thinly disguised Zeldman-bashing. Other commenters weighed in with value judgments. This has lead Paul to create a list of critique rules to address some of these concerns.
However I think there are still two large problems that will lead to further complaints:
- People without a ‘formal’ design education associate “critique” with “criticism” in it’s most common meaning:
1 a :the act of criticizing usually unfavorably
- Some people (including fellow designers) forgot the most important point of a critique (to give constructive criticism), and started to make value judgments. This is something that Paul’s rules haven’t addressed
In design and art schools, the word “criticism” has a slightly different meaning; 1b: a critical observation or remark c: CRITIQUE 2: the art of evaluating or analyzing works of art or literature
. Although I doubt my design education is representative of ‘formal’ design schools, my classes often included critiques. In a group critique each student presented their work, explained their inspirations and intent, and possibly described where they intend to go with it (if the critique is mid-project). Then the other students offered comments about the work.
To start with everyone is afraid of saying anything bad/useful about a design. After some coaching our comments took the form of “perception — reaction — reason”, eg “this aspect of the work makes me think of X me, because it’s similar to Y” or “I find that feature confusing because I can’t decide if it represents A or B”. It was very important that a comment was backed up by a reason; what exactly caused the reaction. This allows the designer to see both what the design is communicating and why. A critique is about giving and receiving constructive criticism; things that help the designer to improve the design, to make it communicate the intended message (or achieve the product goal etc) more successfully. While it can be quite confrontational to have your work examined this way (especially once everyone is honest rather than nice), it’s exceptionally useful to improve your design literacy and ability.
As design is fundamentally based around achieving a goal (for graphic design it’s communicating a specific message to a target audience), the intended message and target audience are necessary to judge if a design has succeeded. As Paul hasn’t done the critique interview-style, he can only guess what Jeffrey’s intentions and audience are. We don’t know whether his perception that Jeffrey has forgotten about his audience
is true or not, as we don’t know Jeffrey’s target audience — it could easily be only Jeffrey himself. But this doesn’t stop the process from being worthwhile, both potentially as constructive feedback for Jeffrey, and as a forum for others to debate and learn about design and critiquing. Most designers will appreciate constructive criticism, as long as it’s done nicely. We all want to improve, and hearing how others perceive your work can give you new perspective and insight.
I think that Paul is aware of how to critique well, and I also think he did so. He stated how he perceived various aspects (both positive and negative) of the design, and why he had each perception. He also offered comments on what he felt would improve the design. Jeffrey’s initial comment backs this up. In hindsight I think Paul could have avoided some of the problems by giving guidelines on how to critique. Also it would have been great for him to critique a site he’d made first, and use it as a chance to teach critiquing. Whether this should be necessary is another matter. I was pretty surprised that the supposedly design-literate audience’s comments degenerated into “this sux”, especially because many of these commenters seemed to feel insulted that Jeffrey’s personal site was somehow not fulfilling their expectations (!). I guess Paul was also taken by surprise by this. However I’m pleased to see that he’s planning to continue — there is a lack of information online about design (web or otherwise) and critiquing (eg the AIGA’s ‘Designing resources’ is in serious need of a critique itself). Paul’s project has the potential to become an excellent resource.
Potential further reading:
- Successful art class critique, by Marvin Bartel
- This contains a very good summary of critiquing for art class, although due to the differences between art and design I don’t agree with some parts of it eg
Try to write what you think that person wants to hear
, which also seems to disagree with some of the other guidelines. - How to run a design critique, by Scott Berkun
- Scott describes how to do a team critique on a prototype web design. The article is very detailed, although it’s focussed on groups large enough to probably need a project manager. There’s lots of other good writing here too, for example Why good design comes from bad design and The myth of optimal web design (which really reflects Jeffrey’s IA comments by the way).
- The delicate art of (web) design critique by Makiko Itō
- This article talks about how to ask for and give constructive criticism, but not in such a formalized way as I’ve described above. It’s perfect advice for using with a forum like SiteCritique or RedCricket.
